Combining the roles of businessman, family man and coach of his daughter's softball team leaves little time for David Dudley the boat owner and fisherman.
But there he was Thursday, mixing it up with other private craft and commercial sportboats near the bank known as the 43-Fathom Spot. It's about a two-hour cruise, approximately 38 miles west of the Kona Kai Yacht Club, where Dudley docks his amazing 50-foot Mikelson sportfisher.
“I work to fish,” said Dudley, who owns West Coast Air in Lakeside. “I'm one of those guys who works hard so I can afford to do this.”
Ocean fishing is expensive for private boaters and commercial sportboat owners. Dudley paid $4.16 a gallon for diesel fuel, $105 for a few scoops of bait and more money for food and beverages. Dudley's boat, the Njord, is “tournament ready,” with every kind of rod or reel and fishing gadget to get the job done.
When asked how much the day on the water cost, he shrugged. It wasn't important, Dudley said, because this is what he loves to do. He's a private boat owner with a passion for fishing.
On this day, his guests were an outdoors writer and John Grabowski, who, like Dudley, is a businessman, husband, father and softball coach. Grabowski also is a well-regarded sportboat captain who fills in on Linda Palm-Halpain's Red Rooster III. Dudley and Grabowski met on the softball field as coaches, never dreaming they shared an equal love for the sea and for fishing.
On this trip, Grabowski supplied the prefishing information he gleaned from his good friend captain Shawn Trowbridge of the Legend out of Seaforth Sportfishing.
In what has been a strange ocean fishing season, most exotic fish, such as yellowfin and dorado, which normally don't show in big numbers until September, arrived early and have pushed farther north and well into U.S. waters.
Dudley and Grabowski took turns running the boat and looking for floating kelp that might hold fish, or a pod of porpoises that might be running with yellowfin tuna. When we did find the mammals, or “animals” as the captains are calling the porpoises these days, they acted more like a herd of antelope and stayed far away from the boat.
“They're really smart,” Grabowski said of the porpoises as they bounced along on the beautiful Pacific. “When David speeds up the boat, they just keep going faster.”
Despite that, we were rewarded with a mix of yellowfin tuna, dorado, yellowtail and albacore, enough to stink up a couple of good-sized coolers with fillets.
“I'd say, per angler, we did as well or better than anyone out here today,” Dudley said.
Dudley's story of how he became a private boater can be traced to his first trip on a commercial sportboat in the early 1970s. He had caught the heaviest fish of the day, but because a deckhand grabbed his rod as the fish was being gaffed, one of the passengers objected when it came time to settle the jackpot money.
“I lost out on the jackpot, and my father said we were done with sportboats,” Dudley said. “He went out and bought a boat, and we've had a boat ever since.”
It started with a modest craft, one that was so small and primitive that his father, Fred, founder of the family's construction business, stored barrels of fuel on it that allowed them to go 60 miles and more from port. But there's nothing small and primitive about their present boat.
There is a good story behind how Dudley stepped up to buy the boat, valued at $1 million.
“It's all because of a black poodle,” he said.
Seems one day his daughter, Hannah, spotted the poodle on a boat at the Kona Kai dock and asked her father if she could pet it. Turns out the boat, owned and outfitted by an orthodontist, was for sale.
But before the purchase was made, David and Hannah had to pitch it all to Mom, Pam Dudley. When she saw how plush and comfortable the boat was, she jumped on board. David and Hannah let Pam name it. Being Norwegian, she picked Njord, the Norse god of good fortune at sea and in the hunt.
One of Pam Dudley's requirements is that the boat never smell like fish. So that was David Dudley scrubbing the boat as clean as a restaurant Thursday afternoon, imploring his guests to return the coolers scrubbed with ammonia.
Grabowski and I plan to return the coolers, empty, but thoroughly cleaned. We'd like to be invited back.
Ed Zieralski: (619) 293-1225; ed.zieralski@uniontrib.com
